Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of user interface management in a hand-held device and more particularly to menu configuration for a user interface of a hand-held device.
Description of the Related Art
The conventional graphical user interface (GUI) has been widely used for many years. The primary function of the GUI includes providing user interface controls with which the end user can interact with an underlying application. The common GUI includes many stock user interface controls, most of which, when combined, can accommodate most computer human interactions required by an application. For example, the static text box control can be used to present text to the end user while an edit box can permit the user to provide textual input to the application. A radio button control can provide for the exclusive selection of an element from among a field of elements, and, of course, a menu bar can provide a selection of drop down menus with menu entries logically linked to programmatic functions of an underlying application.
When user interface controls are displayed in a GUI, often one must compromise between the amount of information that can be displayed within the GUI display, and the amount of displayable space within the GUI display in which a preferred amount of information can be presented. Where the display area must be reduced due to height and width constraints, information that otherwise might be easily grouped and viewed in within a larger display space often cannot be presented as a single, cohesive set of interrelated interface controls. This circumstance has been known to arise in the use of pervasive devices, including handheld computers and portable cellular telephones. In the case of pervasive devices, the display area sometimes can be limited to as little as a one-hundred sixty (160) pixel by 160 pixel region or less.
The use of the menu bar in a constrained display area prevalent in pervasive computing devices such as personal digital assistants, cellular telephones and smart phones can be problematic where the number of menu items in a drop down menu can be greater than able to be accommodated by the constrained display. In the worst case scenario, the length of the drop down menu will exceed the constrained display thus obscuring those menu items at the bottom portion of the drop down menu and requiring manual scrolling to reach the obscured menu items. Further, the width of a constrained display can limit the number of drop down menus in a menu bar. To accommodate all possible constrained displays, the application developer then must limit the number of menu items in a drop down menu and the number of drop down menus in a menu bar to a number able to be accommodated by the most constrained display known at the expense of those devices with less constrained displays.